[whatwg] Use of article to identify the main content of a web page (was Re: A plea to Hixie to adopt <main>)

[Steve Faulkner]

Hi Ian,

hixies suggestion to use article to act as a main content identifier [3] is
incorrect, as per the HTML spec [1]

The article element represents a self-contained composition in a document,
> page, application, or site and that is, in principle, independently
> distributable or reusable, e.g. in syndication. This could be a forum post,
> a magazine or newspaper article, a blog entry, a user-submitted comment, an
> interactive widget or gadget, or any other independent item of content.
>

The main element as per the main  element spec [2]:

The main element represents the main content section of the body of a
> document or application. The main content section consists of content that
> is directly related to or expands upon the central topic of a document or
> central functionality of an application.
>

The article and main roles as defined in ARIA  have distinct
characteristics and those distinctions are also expressed via  how they
(and the article element) are exposed via accessibility APIs in browsers.

[1]
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/the-article-element.html#the-article-element
[2]
https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-extensions/raw-file/tip/maincontent/index.html
[3]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Nov/0221.html


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG

www.paciellogroup.com | www.HTML5accessibility.com |
www.twitter.com/stevefaulkner
HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives -
dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/
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